You and I are Downsizing. Blame it on Understanding Business Operations

Yes. You and I are going to have to do with a simple blog. Because I am done preaching Cabernet Sauvignon and drinking the bitter waters of Marah. But before you stone me to death for this sin, hold your rocks and let me dissect the pestilence that caused it. How understanding my business operations got me shutting the extra rooms of my late website.

My Confession

I have been running this website for 5 years now. But I have never made a kobo through affiliate marketing, selling of my books or even Google AdSense. Despite tapping into these online money-making avenues and their kinds.

Surprised?

Don’t be. I am one of the many. Or shall I say one of the few willing to admit that the earning has just not happened despite the efforts?

Even with over 70 articles in this blog, I have not had enough readers to get AdSense smiling my way. Neither have I enticed anyone of my readers to buy my books or from an affiliate link up here. The shame!

The Business Operation Question

“How would you explain Business Operations to a would-be entrepreneur?” The interviewer shot a new question.

The tall, dark, sharp-eyed gentleman would stop at nothing until he was sure I was the right person for the job. I had applied for a business trainer’s job at an organization helping the youth and women in the Coast region of Kenya grow their businesses. We sat in this tiny cubicle threatening to revive the spirits of cluster phobia from within me. The interview span over 45 minutes with each tick on my mental clock begging for oxygen.

I knew business operations had something to do with the everyday activities in a firm. But the value-adding and profit-making bits refused to tag along in my response. So I mumbled an answer that would be the death of me.

How could I get it right while I had not taken the time to understand the business operations in the service I offer you?

The business that consumes most of my time and earned me about $1500 over a year from a client I met online?

So for the next 7 days, I committed myself to define Business Operations in an intimate way. Something personal, like the way problem identification, ideation, research and development, product creation, sales, marketing and record keeping came alive to me.

But wait a minute, are these not the components of business operations?

My only problem was that I did not understand the exact way these activities increased the value of my business and made me profit. Knowing that would propel me to innovate around each one and grow my business.

Give and Take

Then I awoke to the order of the day; to find a way to make my blog valuable enough for my readers to willingly give me a profit.

So before manufacturing yet another article I should ask, “How does writing this article make my website more valuable to my audience and therefore generate profit for me?”

And that question brought me to the decision to turn Fine Wealth into a simple blog with ads, affiliate links and lots of items to sell.

My Article Writing Process

It may sound like I am done being nice. But you may also want to understand the steps I take:

Step 1: I spend at least one hour daily tilling Quora, social media and the yard of real life looking for possible problems that I can help solve. That is my raw material acquisition process.

Step 2: Then I conduct thorough online and offline research on the matter so as to develop the content in response.

Step 3: I spend about 2 hours internalizing the content to find a befitting real-life experience around the issue. Consider this the manufacturing process. I then write the story first in Notepad so Microsoft Word’s Grammar Police won’t slow me down. And use Canva to deliver meaningful images to keep you reading. Sometimes YouTube videos and GIFs come to play. The end result is a story elaborating on the solution to a business problem!

Step 4: But such only benefits the subscribers if I do not shout about it on social media. Not even me. And that is where marketing comes to play. I need to make sales. And until the writing of this article, every step above has won no hearts for me, through sales or clicks. Zero profit. I have however profited from clients who came here and fell in love with my writing style. Such hired me to ghostwrite articles and books for them. But that Upwork well dried back in December 2021. And the sale of content has taken nose dive.

Step 5: Despite the fall, service delivery must continue for your good. That is where updating the website’s plugins, paying for the domain and hosting and attending physical meetups to keep my name relevant come in. While none of this brings profits, they add value to my business.

Do you now see why I had to kiss goodbye to the website and focus on a simple blog?

Downsizing, are We?

Absolutely!Because I now realize I do not need every page on the website to evangelize about turning gifts and talents into viable businesses. After all, I am a product of that gospel. So trending it shall even if it is the last thing I do on earth.

So after evaluating each component of Fine Wealth’s business operations, I have decided to focus on the blog. The sector that shares the truths, trials and tussles of entrepreneurship adding value to your life. The only one that bears the history of making a profit for my business. And still holds that potential. Now you know.

But hey, maybe it is time to evaluate your business operations too and see what brings value and earns profit for your business. Then you can scale that up. What do you say?